National Post editorial board: Hobos with a badge? It’s win-win!

Hobos with a badge? It’s win-win!

Enforcing the laws against cellphone use behind the wheel is difficult: There simply aren’t enough police officers out there to monitor every driver in Canada. One obvious solution would be to enlist homeless people in this law-enforcement effort, since many of them spend their days on street corners anyway: Hand each of them a gun and a special “Deputy Hobo” badge, and tell them to write up anybody who rolls up to a red light with a phone at their ear.

They could keep 10% of their ticketing take. To ensure maximum safety, they would have to give the gun back at the end of every workday. What’s the worst that can happen?

If that idea is a little too “outside the box,” the next best option is to flip roles: Put the police in hobo outfits. As examples from across Canada show, this tactic gets the job done.

As reported in Thursday’s National Post, police are putting on hoodies and holding up crudely drawn cardboard signs at intersections, on the hunt for unsuspecting drivers gabbing on their cellphones. The signs themselves are creative. One Ottawa officer put “God bless,” at the end of his. A Salmon Arm, B.C., RCMP corporal, who spends his day walking up and down a meridian on the Trans-Canada highway with a wig and crutch, has a sign with a smiley face and deliberate spelling errors (at least, he tells people they’re deliberate).

Alas, some anti-poverty advocates don’t like the new plan.

“We don’t want to give panhandlers a bad name by people thinking that they’re cops,” says John Clarke, an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). “They are displacing people who are trying to survive by panhandling.… From a general decency point of view, it is a sneaky and unsavoury tactic.”

This from a man whose OCAP membership once violently trashed the constituency office of Jim Flaherty, and allegedly threw marbles under the hooves of horses.

In fact, as we see it, the whole scheme is a win-win-win: Police enforce the law, the roads become safer and the homeless will get more respect, not less.

Think about it: If the guy in the hoodie and baggy jeans might be a police officer, are you going to be more or less inclined to give him the time of day?

It might even make panhandling more profitable. If a hobo sees you jaywalk, who among us will take the chance of walking right on past as he shakes his cup? Many Canadians might hedge their bets by flipping him some change, lest there be a badge under the hoodie. John Clarke, self-proclaimed champion of the down and out, may want to re-examine his business model.